Human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN); economist, Dr. Henry Boyo, and other social commentators have cautioned President Muhammadu Buhari against seeking financial assistance and recommendations from the G7, the IMF and the World Bank.
They gave the warning during a civil society roundtable on the state of the nation organised by the Nigeria United for Democracy in Lagos on Wednesday.
They said the President should rather generate income by reducing government expenditure and fighting corruption.
Buhari had, on June 7, attended the G7 summit in Germany where he presented a wish list.
However, Falana said, “Our President went to the G7 and we are happy. And he went there with a bowl, ‘please do this for us, do this for us,’ we must interrogate that, has our situation become so bad that we have to ask for external support when we have not mobilised the energy, the potential of our people to turn this country around?
“And please, let the new regime be told that the dangerous prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank and the G7 that we have followed since 1986 like the Structural Adjustment Programme, which was imposed on Nigeria, have reduced Nigeria to a banana republic.
“Since then we have been managing poverty, what they call poverty alleviation, not poverty eradication, because this system can never abolish poverty.”
Falana urged Buhari not to listen to external forces that were known for bringing Africa to its knees through self-serving economic politics.
In his remarks, Boyo said the IMF’s prescriptions had devalued the naira and made life unbearable for Nigerians, adding that Buhari should work at stabilising the country’s faltering monetary policies.
He urged the President not to remove petroleum subsidy.
He said, “We are running an economy that promotes poverty. It is either about privatisation, downsizing of workers, so that all manners of goods are brought to destroy the country’s industrial potential.”
He noted that Nigeria needs more local refineries that would bring about a reduced price of petrol to around N67 without subsidy as long as the naira appreciates against the dollar by 50 per cent from the current exchange rate
Also speaking, a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Ikeja branch, Mr. Monday Ubani, said the President Goodluck Jonathan administration failed woefully in the fight against corruption.
He, therefore, called on Buhari to strengthen the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and other anti-graft agencies
He said, “There is corruption in the public sector and the private sector. In the public sector we have the corruption of the political elites or the political class which is very pervasive, destructive and harmful.”
“We have the corruption of the civil service, which more deadly and possesses the potency of mass destruction of anything both living and non-living.”
No comments:
Post a Comment